Yes, scientists do much good. But a country run by these arrogant gods of certainty would truly be hell on earth

By A N Wilson
Updated: 02:50 EDT, 4 November 2009

The row between the Government and its scientific advisers blazes on like an out-of-control forest fire.

It began with that difficult customer Professor David Nutt, who was chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He told the Home Office that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than the banned substance cannabis, and horse-riding was more of a risk to your health than ecstasy.

But he was not content simply to give advice, of course. What he appeared to want to do was to dictate to the Government, and when it refused to acknowledge his infallibility, Professor Nutt started to break ranks and to denounce the country's law on drugs.

Breaking ranks: David Nutt said alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than cannabis

Now he has been sacked, the scientific establishment is in an uproar of self-pity and self-importance. How dare mere politicians question their judgments? They are scientists, aren't they? And what scientists say must be taken as true.

The trouble with a 'scientific' argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts.

It is one thing to argue Professor Nutt's case in a university common room or over a Hampstead dining table, but another to translate his arguments to murkier parts of our society.

Try saying that ecstasy is safe in the sink estates of our big cities, where police, social workers and teachers work to improve the lives of young people at the bottom of the heap. Try saying it to those who see, every single day, the devastation wrought not only on the youngsters themselves, but on whole communities by the casual abuse of drugs. 

Bluster

If you add together all the winos and self-destructive alcoholics, then throw in the smokers who've died of respiratory or cardiac disease, the total will far outstrip the number of young people who die after taking an ecstasy pill - and you could conclude from this that smoking and drinking are more dangerous than ecstasy.

That does not mean it is safe to take ecstasy nor that it is desirable to tolerate a druggy culture among the impressionable young.

This whole debate between David Nutt and the Government is about much more than the simple academic question over the relative dangers of cigarettes, drink and other drugs. What is on trial is the reputation of science.

Of course, it would be folly to deny that we all owe a vast debt to scientific discoveries, made by patient, intellectually rigorous men and women over the past few centuries. Just think what we owe to developments in medicine, let alone all those technologies we now depend upon, from cars to computers.

Contempt: Home Secretary Alan Johnson has been denounced by the scientific establishment for sacking Professor Nutt

Nor would I ever wish to suppress scientific inquiry or to undervalue the good which scientists have done for our world.

But there is an increasing presumption among many intelligent and good-hearted people that science is an absolute truth, that its methods of arriving at the truth are infallible and that scientists must be listened to at all times.

A Home Secretary who sacks a plucky little scientist for daring to speak his mind - correction, daring to speak 'the truth' - is surely worthy of our contempt? That is how the scientific establishment has portrayed the story as they line up to denounce Alan Johnson.

Before we get carried away by their bluster, we should recognise the arrogance for what it is. What the scientists are saying basically is that they will brook no contradiction. Yet if we examine the history of scientific experts - and, in particular, scientists advising governments - they do not have a very happy record.

Do you remember the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001? All reasonable farmers and vets believed that the epidemic could be contained by vaccine, or simply by isolating animals. But the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, David King, insisted upon a massive cull.

Millions of sheep and cows were destroyed, and every hill and valley, which once echoed to bleating or lowing was silenced and despoiled. Did we ever hear a word of apology when events proved this government scientific adviser wrong?

We hear a lot about the bovine brain disease BSE which was passed onto humans, and the possible cures which science might effect. But how often do we hear that BSE was almost certainly passed on to other cattle because scientists had encouraged farmers to force their animals to eat concentrated foods which contained beef products?

Going back in time, some people think that Hitler invented the revolting experiments performed by Dr Mengele on human beings and animals.

Irrationality

But the Nazis did not invent these things. The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth. He allowed scientists freedoms which a civilised government would have checked.

I am not suggesting that any British scientists are currently conducting experiments comparable to those which were allowed in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Russia.

But I see the same habit of mind at work in Professor Nutt and his colleagues as made those mad scientists of the 20th century think they were above the moral law which governs the rest of us mortals.

The worship of science is the great superstition of our age. The scientific adviser speaks and we are all supposed to believe him, whether he is promoting crops genetically modified to withstand huge doses of poisonous weedkillers and pesticides, or tampering with the origin of human life itself in so-called stem cell research.

Those who dare question scientists are demonised for their irrationality. Global warming may or may not be a certainty, but anyone who queries it has his sanity questioned. Cast doubt on these gods of certainty and you are accused of wanting to suppress free expression - which is the argument now being used by Nutt and pals against the Home Secretary.

In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.

The point here is not whether he was right or wrong - it was the way in which the scientific establishment closed ranks in order to assassinate him. There was a blanket denunciation of his heresy, just as there is if anyone dares to point out some of the mistakes made by that very fallible genius Charles Darwin.

Science rules - and it does so with just as much energy as the old Spanish Inquisition that refused to allow any creed other than Catholicism, and with the Inquisition's need to distort arguments and control the brains of men and women who might otherwise think for themselves.

Naivety

In complex areas - medicine, agriculture, astronomy - the politicians who make our laws inevitably have to consult 'experts'. But this is not to guarantee that such experts are always right. As Margaret Thatcher once said: 'Advisers advise and ministers decide.' To be governed by politicians is a necessary evil. To be governed by arrogant scientists would truly be hell on earth.

Listen to the way these scientists are describing one another as they huff and puff at the Home Secretary's treatment of Professor Nutt. 'It will be hard to find a replacement of comparable expertise and stature,' says one pompous ass in the letters column of a newspaper.

Stature? Nutt? Like so many scientific experts, his arrogance is matched by his naivety. Like them, he cannot bear to be contradicted.

And to every one who thinks otherwise, I would ask them to carry out a simple experiment. Put a drug, bought casually on the street corner, and a glass of red wine on the table when your teenager comes home from school. Which of them, in all honesty, would you prefer him to try?